Questions

Do writers go shopping? Do they worry about fashion? Do they count calories? Do they worry about root canals and dandruff and ingrown nails?

The answer I’m hearing: Great writers are beyond petty matters.

At least that’s the answer I get from biographies and anecdotes and biopics of writers. True, these are fictionalized, and therefore they offer the big picture, as good fiction must. Who wants to sit through a movie of an unedited life? Who wants to see the hero preoccupied with laundry and tooth-brushing and napping when his or her huge passions are infinitely more interesting? Censorship, adultery, disease, suicide, insanity, unsympathetic editors, ungrateful lovers, hateful children – these are the things we want to see.

So, do writers transcend housework and the daily commute? Or in their minds they transform these minute concerns into feminist, Marxist, surrealist, postcolonial arguments. It seems like they always talk big, God-like: every line that spouts from their mouths is quotable (meanwhile I am stuck on talking tiny, like, you know).

The impression left by fabled writers is that a writer’s life is made up of leisurely walks, long conversations with fellow writers in a darkly lit café, hours of self-imposed imprisonment in a study bursting with books and leaves of paper and inspiration. A life that revolves around writing.

Does a writer become great when s/he perfects the skill of ignoring distractions? Is writing about observing the world then shutting it off? Are writers ever exhausted that they say, “Time for a break! Let me take off my writing hat, let me put on my traveler’s cap! I’m taking a hike! I’m off on a cruise!”

I have an incredible guilt. I feel I am supposed to live writing as if it were my religion. But I’ve always been bad with religion. I have no discipline, no patience. I am a failure at faith. I mistrust things that require time to become whole. Every time an idea is born, I love it, in its fetal state. But the next minute, I want it to be all grown-up. I refuse to empty my mind so one idea can occupy my life. I realize that I actually chose to be distracted – by chores, hobbies, and other ideas. Other ideas that go nowhere, of course.

Chew on This:

Children set off each day without a worry in the world.

Andre Breton
from Manifesto of Surrealism